


Angel Alone

by under_a_grey_cloud



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Other, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 11:49:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8205526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/under_a_grey_cloud/pseuds/under_a_grey_cloud
Summary: Castiel is woken from a deep meditation by the sound of Dean making coffee.He sets off to ask Dean to be a little quieter.He gets way more quiet than he bargained for. This little story is very sad and lonely and gets sadder and lonelier till there's nothing left.Nihilists rejoice. This one's for you.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short one-off based on a voice memo I made when I was trying out my new iPhone. I was feeling sad and lonely and didn't want to get out of bed, so I told myself a story. I made it up as I went along. It's a character study in loss and more loss and ultimate loss.
> 
>  **WARNING:** Please don't read this unless you're willing to take a short trip into an imaginary world you would not want to visit. Reading this story might cause a strange sort of peace, or it might cause deep depression and despair. **Seriously. If you're feeling dangerously down, please read something else.**
> 
> Thanks as always to my wonderful Beta reader, [Mordhena](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Mordhena)

The grattle of the coffee machine shakes Castiel from his morning meditation.

 _Grattle_? _Is that a word?_

_Grating. Rattle. Oh._

He decides to ask Dean to please be a little quieter with the coffee machine, but Dean’s not in the kitchen. In fact Castiel’s not in the kitchen. He hasn’t moved at all. He’s still in bed.

_Wasn’t I going somewhere else? Am I still meditating? Am I awake?_

Castiel is not used to being uncertain, at least not about material things. Frustrated, he forces himself to jump out of the bed, onto the floor. He slips, on a slipper no less, and falls on his butt. His vessel’s tailbone hurts.

_Good. I’m awake._

He wonders where Dean is. He looks for him but Dean doesn’t seem to be anywhere. He looks for Sam. Sam doesn’t seem to be anywhere either.

He wanders through the map room. He looks at the map. He takes some books from the library shelves and skims through a few sections. His favorite sections. Sections on black holes and quarks and string theory; all the ways humans try so hard to explain the universe. Usually this makes him smile. Not today.

It’s quiet. He doesn’t hear the sound of birds, or crickets, or anything _._ He thinks he should open some windows. He remembers he’s in the bunker and the small downstairs windows don’t open, so he decides to go outside. He opens the front door. Quiet. He starts to walk up the bunker stairs. Quiet. He’s afraid to take each stair. Afraid of what he’ll find. It’s quiet. Still quiet.

He sits on the top stair and realizes why there are no sounds of birds, crickets, anything. There’s no sound at all. There’s nothing at all. No grass. No trees. No sign of destroyed grass or trees. He can’t figure out what the ground is made of. He reaches down and tries to pick up a piece, but it disintegrates in his hand, leaving a kind of grey sludge.

 _Oh. I must still be in bed, meditating. That’s why this is happening. I’ll stop meditating and get up._ He concentrates on stopping the meditation, but there he is, still sitting on the bunker stairs, staring into nothing. His mind won’t work. There are gears that won’t engage. He turns on angel radio, and it’s silent. It’s never silent. He turns on Dean radio. He always knows where Dean is, he can always hear Dean, see Dean, smell Dean, but Dean isn’t anywhere. Nobody’s anywhere. He stands up, walks the perimeter, but the space around the bunker is completely empty.

 _The Impala. Dean must be in the Impala._ Castiel opens the garage door. _Yes. Oh yes. There’s the Impala._ _What a relief_. When he opens the driver’s side door, a huge layer of dust comes off on his fingers. He touches the steering wheel. It looks as if he’s painted the wheel another color with his fingers. It’s so dusty and grey that the little part that he touched stands out as very black. He doesn’t understand. He thinks he must be stuck in a terrible meditation. He closes his eyes, grits his teeth and thinks:

_I will stop meditating now_

_I will stop meditating now_

_I will stop meditating now and I will return to the world_

He opens his eyes. He’s not in bed. He’s not meditating. He’s still in the garage, with the Impala. The car still contains a very faint odor of Dean. He looks inside for empty beer bottles, take-out wrappers, coffee cups, anything. The Impala is strangely empty, as if no one has ever driven it.

Castiel leaves the garage. He feels something he’s never felt before. He doesn’t understand what it is. His vessel’s stomach begins to clench, and higher up, he feels an odd space around his heart. The space feels empty. Constricting and empty. It’s usually full. He takes for granted that it’s full. But now it isn’t. He becomes frightened. Angels don’t frighten easily but he is terrified. He leans back his head and lets out a roar of terror. But he doesn’t hear anything. _Did I do that? Or did I just imagine it? Am I alive? Am I dead? This can’t be Heaven. It can’t be Hell. I’ve been to both of those places and they’re nothing like this. Am I in the Void?_ Having never previously been in the Void, he doesn’t know. _I don’t understand._

He returns to the bunker but it’s no longer there. Nevertheless, he can still walk down the stairs. He enters the kitchen that’s no longer there. He decides to make himself some coffee. But there’s no coffee in the refrigerator. There’s nothing in the refrigerator. There is no refrigerator. There’s no coffee maker on the counter. There’s nothing on the counter. There is no counter. He sits down. He must be sitting on a chair, but he looks down and he is not. His weight is supported as if by a chair, but it’s supported by nothing. The area around his heart that had felt empty before is now singing a terrible atonal chord-less song of terror. He tries to contact Chuck. Chuck doesn’t answer. He tries to contact the angels he knows as friends. They’re not there. He tries to picture Sam and Dean, but the horror is, he can’t remember exactly what Dean looks like. The last time Dean had a haircut it was a little uneven. It was shorter on one side than the other. But he can’t remember. Was it shorter on the right side, or shorter on the left side?

This inability to remember Dean’s hair throws him into an absolute panic. He leans his head down on the table that isn’t there and holds his head in his hands. He looks at his hands. He can see them. He still has hands. But only he seems real. He squeezes his head really hard and bangs it on the table that isn’t there, trying to get out of this horrible place that he’s in. _Is this what humans call nightmares? But I’m an angel. I don’t sleep._

Suddenly, he breathes a huge sigh of relief. He hears the Impala pulling into the driveway. The Impala stops, and Sam and Dean are inside. They’re talking and laughing and he thinks _Yes, yes. Everything is back to normal._ But then he remembers having seen the Impala in the garage. He’s afraid to check. Is the Impala in the driveway with Sam and Dean, or is it in the garage? He doesn’t know. He’s beset by such uncertainty. He’s not used to this. Even though he is not an ordinary angel, he is still an Angel of the Lord. Angels don’t feel uncertainty. They do not see choice. They see Yes, they see No. Castiel doesn’t understand what he sees or feels. He runs to the garage and the Impala is gone. He runs to the driveway and the Impala is gone. _Where is the Impala? Where is Dean? Where is Sam?_ He doesn’t understand.

He goes back to the bunker which is no longer there, and sees shadows in his mind of all the things that aren’t there. Shadows of Dean’s jacket, thrown over a chair that isn’t there. The jacket isn’t there. His own trench coat isn’t there hanging on its hook which isn’t there. He walks back to the bedroom he shares with Dean and the room is gone. The bed is gone. There are not even the slightest scratches on the floor to indicate the bed was ever there, that he and Dean were ever in bed together. He lies down, suspended where the bed used to be, for a long, long time. He does not know how long.

 _There’s a time for everything. And a time for nothing._ He leaves the bedroom that isn’t there and sits on the couch that isn’t there. He turns on the TV that isn’t there with the remote that isn’t there. He sees nothing. Not even static. _Is that because the television isn’t real, or because there’s nothing for the television to broadcast?_ He remembers that he is an angel and that he has wings. He transports himself outside. He lets his wings out. His wings exist. They are beautiful. He touches them and the feathers are so familiar. They are his wings. He tugs a feather. It doesn’t come out. It stays where it’s supposed to be. He has wings. He takes off and flies for a long time, looking down, looking at what used to be the Earth, but the planet isn’t there. He’s flying and looking over a large planet-sized ball of nothing. He ponders how he can be seeing nothing but he’s flying and he keeps flying.

He alights in what used to be a park. If he squints just right he can see the bench where he and Dean used to sit and talk. If he squints just right he can see the children’s climbing structures and slides and swings. He thinks he hears the sound of a swing creaking in the wind, but he doesn’t. There’s no sound. There’s no swing. There’s no wind. His vessel feels normal. But what is normal? Normal is now nothing. Miles and miles and miles and miles of nothing. That’s what’s normal. He wonders if he can find the bunker again. It’s difficult, when there is nothing to see, or hear, or feel. But if he tilts his head and squints just right he can see the shimmering outline of the bunker. He returns, but the bunker isn’t there.

He calls loudly. “Hello? Dean? Sam? Anyone?” but as he forms the words, he doesn’t hear them. He’s incapable of making a sound that can be heard.There’s no one to hear him anyhow. No one at all. He doesn’t understand. He wasn’t made to comprehend such things. His vessel, polluted by the angel inside, can no longer feel what a human feels. _Humans. There are no humans. They’re all gone._ He’s alone. He’s entirely and completely alone. He screams and screams, and hears nothing but the terror that’s filled the space around his heart.

He goes down the stairs that aren’t there into the bunker that isn’t there, puts his head in his hands on the table that isn’t there, and thinks. He knows. He doesn’t know. Suddenly he hears a sound. A real sound. A sound he recognizes. The sound is coming from himself. Although it’s not really a sound. It’s a feeling. It’s quiet sobbing. A throbbing in his chest. He’s crying. Crying at the table that’s not there, crying on the chair that’s not there, missing Dean so much, missing the world so much. Is it only him now? Why? Why would Chuck do that to him? Is he being punished? He wracks his brain, and can’t remember anything he might or might not have done to deserve punishment. The past is gone. All he can do is cry. Cry for the loss of what’s no longer there. Cry for the loss of what’s harder and harder to remember. Cry because he can’t remember which side of Dean’s hair is shorter than the other.

He gives up. This is too wrong. Too wrong for him to understand. He’s only an Angel of the Lord. So he puts his head back down on his arms, resting on the kitchen table that isn’t there, and cries. And cries. And cries. And cries.

Days pass. Weeks. Years. Millennia. The angel doesn’t know. Or care. He just cries.


End file.
